I’m thinking of shifting this email to monthly because I think I could identify longer-term trends better, have higher-quality links and, crucially, because I’d only have to do it once a month instead of every week.

Part of the reason it’s weekly is because everyone says ‘social media moves fast’. But if anything what I’ve found is it’s glacial - without any major innovation on the platforms we’re all just creating content in roughly the same pillars pushing the same generational/emotional/topical buttons with variations depending on presenter, exhibition/performance and individual sense of humour. Every now and then there’ll be a twist or a new trend that is worth jumping on.

The fundamentals are the same. A hook/content/pay-off format will serve you well, decide if you want to be more trend-, internal- or culture-led based on your audiences and your objectives, and then get the right people who enjoy making content to do the job. For every organisation the devil is in how you gear your organisational priorities, structures and personalities to that end.

I also think we all get too many emails and I don’t want to be in that category of ‘I should get around to reading those but there are too many of them and it’s making me anxious.’

So this newsletter is still useful for keeping tabs on those trends and collecting best-in-class examples, but if you like the weekly cadence email me and I’ll take it ‘under advisement’.

Content of this week

• If you’ve arranged your collections beautifully (because what else can you do with 10,000 pot-sherds) then it’s worth showing them off.

• This Edward Hopper skit opens up a treasure trove of skits inserting yourself into paintings.

• Just a ton of creativity in this clown.

• Whenever you’re having a bad day just link people to this video.

• If you’re having a slow day then you can always pick a fight with archaeologists.

The bullet point bit

• Remember when everyone had to stop AI crawlers overwhelming their websites? The result is that AI scrapers are now taking their data from unscrupulous websites that push their own products and narratives, even if they’re wrong or self-serving.

• Bluesky’s active user base is shrinking (on the app at least), which I would describe as: not great. In contrast, Threads is absolutely thriving. Even though I quite like Bluesky I find it hard to full-throatedly recommend it to clients unless they like professional networking or their audience is made up of massive nerds. Give it a couple of years and Threads will probably consume the micro-blogging space.

Personal stuff I do for me and you can just skip this if you like

🎮📖 what I’m consuming as a consumer

I’m finally reading Adrian Mole and my favourite line is "It is my grandma’s birthday today; she is seventy-six and looks it."

🐕 Keith

Here he is